


you live in a cupboard and your body is not your own.

by artsyspikedhair



Series: you are not who they think you are, for to them you are okay [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Abusive Dursley Family, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Biracial Character, Child on Child Sexual Abuse, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Gen, Internalized Victim Blaming, Lowercase, Minor Sirius Black/Remus Lupin, POV Second Person, Physical Abuse, Racism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-20
Updated: 2016-09-20
Packaged: 2018-08-14 22:10:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8030671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/artsyspikedhair/pseuds/artsyspikedhair
Summary: you are harry potter. you are not special in any way. you stay silent at vernon's dinner parties, you do petunia's chores, and you tell nobody about the cupboard.





	you live in a cupboard and your body is not your own.

you are harry potter. you did not know your own name until kindergarten, when the shouts of "boy!" turned into "harry! that's your name now!" in the summer before you started school. you would find out later that most children know their name from birth. you still aren't sure dudley knows his, so used as he is to being called dudderkins and sweetums. 

you are harry potter, and you are an orphan. you have no memories of your parents, knowing only that they died due to police brutality, after drinking a bit too much. you know that because you researched it yourself, in the library in sixth grade. your family, the dursleys', told you they died in a car crash. they also told you it was because of your good-for-nothing father, but that was also a lie. james potter, according to the obituary written by remus lupin and sirius black, was a kind man who worked as a mechanic and baked cookies for his customers. he loved deer, and would do anything for his wife, lily. the two were high school sweethearts, as were sirius and remus. you learned the last bit online, later (nobody wants the gays in a newspaper, you imagine sirius would chuckle). when you read the newspaper, you cried. you've always known you were different, but you saw the newspaper's photograph, the brown skin of your father mirroring yours, the green eyes of your mother looking so much like yours, but softer. she has seen less.

you were put into the cupboard long before you could remember. you had always lived there, so when you tried to befriend people and learned they had something called bedrooms, you kept it a secret. you noticed some of the other kids were like you, coming to school with long sleeves to cover the bruises, but most weren't. most of the kids at memorial elementary were painfully normal, with parents who loved them and full, round faces. you couldn't imagine their lives, but sometimes, when you glimpsed yourself in a spoon or other shiny object, you almost seemed innocent. 

dudley played harry hunting in elementary school, chasing you and beating you. but when the two of you reached stonewall middle school, the games took a different tone. he wouldn't beat you up anymore. instead, he would pin you to the ground and touch you, groping you. this happened at night, in the quiet of your cupboard. he would call you names, worse ones than freak. names like poofter and ragdoll and "you're not even worth the food you eat, hairball. this is the only thing you're good for: getting my rocks off." you tried to fight, sometimes, but dudley was large and you, well, you would end up with broken glasses and a bum that bleed for days when you tried fighting. you didn't have a word for the broken, constant dirtied feeling. you almost missed the beatings, because piers polkiss was involved in those. someone knew about those. this you suffered in silence. 

you still had beatings though, when the garden wasn't weeded or the bacon got burnt. vernon dursley was not a patient man, and petunia is a menace with the frying pan. you learned to be quick in everything, so that you could get your schoolwork done without getting locked in the cupboard. 

it was with great excitement that you were given the leeway to skip a year of stonewall. petunia tried to fight the teachers, using excuses such as "what about the boy's friends! he'll be an outcast!", but the guidance counselor knew as well as you did that she was not interested in your well-being. but nobody did anything about it, because the dursley's donate money to the school and petunia the pto president, and how would it look, really, to have such upstanding citizens charged with child abuse? petunia was not the only one concerned about appearances. 

but at hogwarts, you made friends. you met a boy with freckles and hair the color of sunsets, and a girl whose skin was darker than yours. the boy, ron, taught you about sports and friendship. the girl taught you about books. and there was the quiet girl, ron's sister who wasn't really his sister, he explained, ginny. ginny had a haunted look to her, one you knew all too well. she flinched at well-meaning hugs, and one day, you caught her crying. so, for the first time in your broken, unworthy life, you told someone about the secrets your body has kept.


End file.
